John is seeing but not observing 

 (Sherlock meta by writingwife-83)

Q: I was watching John's Irene speech in TLD and I know many of us know that a huge part of it applies to Molly. When John said, "Trust you [Sherlock] to fall for a sociopath [Irene]," I remembered this bit Moffat said at the Comic Con back in 2013, "I don't think they're [Sherlock & Molly] gonna end up dating. Two sociopaths in one relationship would not be a good idea." Well, what do you know? Sherlock has long fell for a sociopath. She just happened to be wearing a lab coat instead of nothing!

Yeah, there’s another one of those “Moffat, why??” moments lol. There’s no logic to it at all. Fist of all, Molly is the least like a sociopath on the show. And second, the writers have stated that Sherlock clearly isn’t a sociopath and that’s simply what he calls himself. It literally sounds like one of those things he says just to get a reaction from people. I know you were just making a cute/funny wording observation but I couldn’t help picking on Moffat’s statement a bit. ;)

And now you’re gonna get me on another tangent…although I do believe that the meaning of John’s words apply well to Molly, sadly I don’t think that would have occurred to him. I think here we have an instance of John seeing but not observing (at least, up to The Final Problem, where perhaps he got some facts straightened out).

I feel like John is just making the overly obvious assumption. I mean, the fist time he sees Irene, she’s literally naked and on top of Sherlock. And then he watches her flirt with him, exchange lusty glances, and set her mobile alert on his phone to an *ahem* enthusiastic sound clip. What guy isn’t going to assume his bestie is interested in that when he finds out she still sends him texts like 3-4 yrs later?

But when it comes to Molly, even in s4e2, John refers to Molly as “the last person you’d think of” when bringing her up to Sherlock. Say what now, John?? And here is where I’ll put some perspective on this and stop just talking about John like he’s an idiot. (tho, ok he has been a little) Most of what happened between Sherlock and Irene happened in front of John and/or he knew all about it. We can say absolutely that the very opposite is true with Sherlock and Molly. The most emotionally charged scenes for sherlolly have taken place alone. No one else was present, and that includes John. (again, up to The Final Problem) Even stuff that’s not on screen, much of it was obviously not observed by John. Sherlock staying at Molly’s flat, working at the lab with her without John at times, calling her for help with random things…all of that. Most of what John has observed of them has been less than warm and fuzzy, except for the apology and cheek kiss at the [Christmas] party.

I think I’ve said it before, but I will repeat that if John knew half of the stuff that has gone down between Sherlock and Molly, he would have been giving that “get yourself a piece of that” speech to Sherlock a long time ago. And it would have been about Molly Hooper.